To those who have pursued science without reaching the rank of discoverers;--who have possessed a derivative knowledge of the laws of nature which others had disclosed, and have employed themselves in tracing the consequences of such laws, and systematizing the body of truth thus produced, the above description does not apply; and we have not therefore in these cases the same ground for anticipating the same frame of mind. If among men of science of this class, the persuasion of a supreme Intelligence has at some periods been less vivid and less universal, than in that higher class of which we have before spoken, the fact, so far as it has existed, may perhaps be in some degree accounted for. But whether the view which we have to give of the mental peculiarities of men whose science is of this derivative kind be well founded, and whether the account we have above offered of that which takes place in the minds of original discoverers of laws in scientific researches be true, or not, it will probably be considered a matter of some interest to point out historically that in fact, such discoverers have been peculiarly in the habit of considering the world as the work of God. This we shall now proceed to do. As we have already said, the names of _great_ discoverers are not very numerous. The sciences which we may look upon as having reached or at least approached their complete and finished form, are Mechanics, Hydrostatics, and Physical Astronomy. Galileo is the father of modern Mechanics; Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton are the great names which mark the progress of Astronomy. Hydrostatics shared in a great measure the fortunes of the related science of Mechanics; Boyle and Pascal were the persons mainly active in developing its more peculiar principles. The other branches of knowledge which belong to natural philosophy, as Chemistry and Meteorology, are as yet imperfect, and perhaps infant sciences; and it would be rash to presume to select, in them, names of equal preeminence with those above mentioned: but it may not be difficult to show, with sufficient evidence, that the effect of science upon the authors of science is, in these subjects as in the former ones, far other than to alienate their minds from religious trains of thought, and a habit of considering the world as the work of God.